Jean Rollin’s REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE (aka REQUIEM POUR UN VAMPIRE, CAGED VIRGINS, VIERGES ET VAMPIRES, CAGED VAMPIRES, DUNGEON OF TERROR, SEX VAMPIRES, VIRGINS AND THE VAMPIRES, THE CRAZED VAMPIRE, THE CRAZED VIRGINS, 1973)

Directed/Written by Jean Rollin
Check out the trailer here!!

Having delved into the works of Jean Rollin last time with THE RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE, I decided to be a glutton for punishment and go for round two even though I had some trouble getting through the first film. REQUIEM FOR THE VAMPIRE proves to be more of the same when it comes to Rollin’s penchant for navel-gazingly slow plotting and uncomfortably long scenes of eroticism consisting of impish women rolling around on the ground with men and other women, but at least this one has some interestingly surreal moments and some goofy vampires to laugh at unintentionally.

As much as I want to hold these Rollin films in high regard, the French filmmaker is doing a lot to keep me from doing so. First and foremost, the vamps in REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE are by far some of the goofiest looking fangers ever put to film. The lead vampire looks like a graying Jeff Goldblum while the prosthetic teeth stick out from all of the vamps mouths awkwardly and crookedly more akin to a malformed saber-toothed tiger than any vamp I’ve seen. Throw in a puffy pirate shirt or two and these creatures of the night are more likely to incite guffaws than screams of terror.

Rollin also tends to linger a bit too long during the multiple scenes of sex and torture and scenes involving both at once. Sure, these films were meant to titillate, most likely, but the same scene of S&M over and over or one scene drawn out lovemaking scene that lasts eons made my fast forward finger heavy.

Apart from those criticisms, I did find REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE more digestible for its offbeat moments, especially the opening scene as a pair of nubile young women are fleeing by car from another car dressed as clowns. The gunfight that ensues is the stuff of low budget 70’s grindhouse dreams and the juxtaposition of the clown costumes and the deadly acts the two girls are doing is oddly cool. The two lasses drop the clown garb momentarily to roll around with each other in a graveyard and almost get buried alive upon hiding from some gravediggers. This story, touted by Rollin as his favorite film because he wrote it in two days, flows like a stream of consciousness beat poem with jazz music playing as the girls flit from graveyard to countryside to gothic castle. Though the film later devolves into S&M territory with scenes of handcuffed virgins and masked whip cracking, the first half of the film works as a gothic fever dream.

I’ve heard good things about the films of Jean Rollin, but these two films RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE and REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE didn’t really do it for me. Though the surreal opener of REQUIEM works, the lack of ideas and drawn-out scenes of sex and torture lost me in the second half.